“Charlotte, I own a castle of no fewer than sixty rooms. And five thousand acres of land. And six hundred sheep. And a house on Grosvenor Square. And another house in Bristol. And a coronet, not to mention any number of priceless—”
“All right. I take your point. You know, it strikes me that it is peculiar—him napping in the middle of the day.”
“Does it?” Abruptly his eyes were sparkling. She had always loved that sparkle. She had liked to imagine it was especially for her, even though she knew it was not.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “He cannot be over fifty. Isn’t that a bit young to take to napping in the afternoon?”
“He was up late last night playing cards. Until nearly dawn.”
“How would you know that? I thought you slept in the stable.”
“Fortier told me.”
“And that is another thing: if you are in fact not common Mr. Church, who is common Mr. Fortier?”
“Heir to the duke of Le Cap.”
“Heir to a duke! Where is Le Cap?”
“Haiti. But he was educated here. We’ve been friends forever. Capital fellow. Wonderfully honorable. Nothing like me, of course.” He smiled.
More little explosions went off in her belly.
“Now, of course, you must tell me exactly what this is,” she said.
“I cannot.” He looked entirely implacable.
Having grown up surrounded by men, and having spent a successful season in London before traveling to America, and then two years in society in Philadelphia, Charlotte knew how the masculine brain functioned. And not only the brain.
She moved closer to him and tilted her face up. “Are you quite certain?”
He drew a hard breath that lifted his chest.
“Yes,” he said rather deeply. “And, just so you know, Charlotte Ascot, you needn’t bat your lashes like that to make my brain go to porridge.”
Her mouth fell open. Pink and lush-lipped and glistening and inviting.
So he kissed it.
Chapter Six
That very moment.
The duke’s bedchamber.
Bending forward, Frye brushed his lips across the lips he had dreamed about in both waking and sleeping, for too many years, each time telling himself he must not, and shutting out the fantasy as soon as it began.
This time he needn’t.
When a little gasp of surprised pleasure escaped between the perfectly parted lips, he kissed them again.
The caress of her lips was everything he had dreamed, and more. Generous. Damp. Soft. Willing.
He tasted first her lower lip, then the upper, and she tasted like heaven, like lavender and some subtle spice he couldn’t place, but it was like the smoke in her eyes: familiar yet mysterious with ineffable, feminine magic. Her breaths were short and shallow, and she did not move except to encourage him with gentle pressure.
He wanted to wrap his hands around her and pull her close. He’d wanted it forever.
He felt the lightest pressure on his chest. Her hand. On him. And within an instant he was imagining her hands all over him, everywhere he needed them.
He stepped back.
Her lashes fluttered, her hand dropped to her side, and her lovely features were full of astonishment.
“What was that?” she uttered.
“That,” he said, drawing a thick breath, “was a kiss.”
“I know. I meant—you—that is—you did it without my permission,” she said in a bit of a rush.
“May I ask it now, retroactively?”
“No. You are—”
“A lout, I know. Charlotte—”
“Why did you kiss me?”
“Because, Charlotte Ascot, you are just so kissable.”
“Kissable?”
He nodded.
“But what about Miss Jameson!”
“Who?”
“Miss Calliope Jameson, the innocent, unprotected maiden whose room you just crept stealthily into in order to seduce her.”
“I did no such thing.”
“Yes, you did.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You did. Last night you said you were traveling the countryside enjoying bachelorhood. Well, I will have you know, Horace Church, that while that innocent girl may appear unprotected she is not. Not while I am residing in this establishment. And if you attempt one more maneuver, you will find me a formidable guard dog standing in your path.”
“I adore the way your nose scrunches up when you’re vexed.”
Her jaw dropped open a second time.
He moved close again and grasped her hands. Her fingers were slender and soft, yet strong. When they tightened for a moment around his, it required all of his self-control not to drag her into his arms.
“I have no intention of seducing Miss Jameson,” he said. “Quite the contrary.”
“Then why did you sneak into her room like that?”
“I snuck into Sheridan’s room. They traded this morning.” His thumbs were making a slow, agonizingly delectable exploration of her wrists.
Charlotte snatched her hands away and stepped back from the temptation of him.
“You are engaged in subterfuge,” she stated. “Real subterfuge. Aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Concerning what?”
“I can tell you nothing more.”
“You will tell me everything.”
“I cannot. Truly.”
“Then I will ask Lord Fortier.”
“You must not expose us.” He looked unusually severe.
“I wasn’t about to,” she protested.
“You were.”
“I was not.”
He smiled.
She could not resist smiling too. “We quarrel like children.”
“We never quarreled when we were children,” he said.
“Of course we didn’t. That would have required you noticing me, which you did not.” Even that once, when she had come upon him in the woods, unconscious and sprawled as though he had fallen, and then, afterward, he had pretended it had not happened.
“I noticed you,” he said quietly now.
“You did not.”
“I did. That summer holiday at Fellsbourne when you won the footrace to the woods.”
A frisson of pleasure stole through her, dislodging the other, horrible memory.
“You remember that?”
“Of course I do.” His tempting lips curved into a smile. “You beat me. And every other boy there. I was twelve. To be beaten by a little girl was disgraceful.”
“I was not a little girl.”
“You were a very little girl. And you were fast.”
“You were disgusted.”
“I was impressed.”
“Wait just a moment!” she exclaimed. “You have changed the subject to distract me from demanding to know more about your subterfuge.”
“Actually, you changed the subject.”
“You did.”
“No. But I do insist that you stay out of this. It is a dangerous business—”
“Dangerous?”
“Anything could happen,” he said with a sober nod. “Now.” He opened his bedchamber door and peeked out into the corridor. “The way is clear. You must go. But, Charlotte, if you see or hear me do anything that seems unlike me, know that is it for a good purpose.”
“Hm,” she said, then slipped through the crack. She looked over her shoulder. “Speaking of things that are unlike you, obviously neither of us will ever speak of that kiss again.”
“Agreed,” he said, stroking a single finger along her soft cheek. “I much prefer action to words.”
Dampening down the burst of hot excitement his touch roused inside her, she drew back and hurried down the corridor.
Throughout the remainder of the day as the snow continued to fall without, inside the inn Charlotte played with the Andersons’ five little children and watched her fellow guests carefully. While she would not put it
entirely past the Duke of Frye to use his charms to entice a woman into minor indiscretions—like abruptly kissing her in his bedchamber—she really didn’t believe it was in his character to entice two women at the same time. She had known him forever and to her knowledge nobody had ever accused him of being a libertine.
Therefore, she determined, he and Lord Fortier must be pursuing a nefarious villain. Who that could be among this modest collection of hapless travelers, she could not imagine. She knew exactly nothing about intrigue and villainy.
So she watched everybody.
It was better, after all, than watching the duke flirt outrageously with the barmaid. He, charming Lord Fortier, oily Mr. Sheridan, and jovial Mr. Anderson (father of the five little children) had established a continuing low-stakes card game at a corner table in the taproom. As the barmaid Nancy brought them pint after pint of ale, then dinner, and following that whiskey, Nancy increasingly teased handsome Mr. Church and, on each visit to the table, leaned farther into his lap than the time before.
Finally she actually fell into his lap. After a cascade of giggles, and after tilting her bosom precariously close to his face, she extricated herself. If the duke had not then immediately cast Charlotte a swift Meaningful Glance, she would have claimed a complaint of the stomach and departed for her bedchamber forthwith. It was making her nauseous.
The stiff Mr. and Mrs. Clayton had taken up a table near the warm hearth. Their son, young George Clayton, stole longing glances alternately at the men playing cards and at Calliope.
Above the rim of her teacup, Calliope bashfully returned his glances. Miss Mapplethorpe poured tea, oblivious to her charge’s silent flirtation with the young sprig of manhood.
And finally, Mrs. Anderson looked about as beleaguered as a young woman could. She held an infant in one arm while feeding another child and casting worried glances at her three older children, who had taken to speeding about the place, up and down the stairs, racing under the inn mistress’s feet, knocking over chairs, and generally making a ruckus.
Charlotte did her best to entertain them, playing Jack Straws and fashioning little dolls out of broom straws and her own hair ribbons.
“It is delightful to have children among us at Christmastime, isn’t it?” Miss Mapplethorpe said with soft eyes upon the little monsters.
“It is,” Charlotte agreed. “You have a kind heart, Miss Mapplethorpe.”
“‘Suffer the children to come to me,’” she said, quoting scripture.
Charlotte wanted children. Lots of children. But children required a husband. And although her father had bid her return to England and finally accept an offer from a suitor of her choice, finally, she knew now that she could not consider that until she had once and for all quashed her foolish infatuation with the Duke of Frye.
The inn mistress entered the taproom in a busy whirl and came toward them, bringing with her the scent of frying bacon. Stirring honey into her tea, Charlotte drew the scents into her nostrils. There was something so sensual about the scent of frying bacon crossed with honey—salty and sweet at once.
Like that kiss.
That kiss.
Horace Church had kissed her. Her toes and lips and everything in between were still tingling.
He thought her kissable.
Now he was flirting with a barmaid.
“My lady, I’ve settled on a menu for tomorrow’s festivities,” the inn mistress said. “But I’d be obliged to consult with you on the entertainments.”
“I will be delighted. I hope Miss Mapplethorpe and Miss Jameson will assist us.”
“Will we have dancing, Lady Charlotte?” Calliope asked, and darted another glance at George Clayton.
“That would be grand. And plenty of games for you,” she said to the two eldest Anderson offspring. They cheered.
“What fun we shall have tomorrow,” she said.
She would distract herself from the handsome duke by helping the inn mistress prepare for the party.
Nancy set another pint of ale before him, he smiled up at her, and Nancy giggled yet again.
Charlotte rolled her eyes away. The snow was bound to cease falling soon, and then she would be off to Kingstag, where she would comfort her dear friend Serena, who had made a very lucky escape indeed.
Chapter Seven
Christmas Eve morning.
The carriage house.
As dawn began to glow behind the heavy clouds that augured more snow, from his bedchamber window Frye watched a man approaching across the pasture toward the carriage house at a remarkable clip. Slipping only once in the knee-deep snow, he recovered swiftly. Slender, and barely protected from the cold in a thin coat and breeches, he was not one of the travelers trapped at this inn. Perhaps he had come from a nearby farm.
Then the fellow lifted his attention toward the inn, revealing beneath the brim of his cap the face Frye liked above all others.
Charlotte Ascot. Wearing men’s clothing. Returning at dawn from . . . where?
He grabbed his coat and hurried down the stairs and into the yard.
As he neared the stable he glimpsed her slipping into the carriage house. He followed.
He made no attempt at silence or stealth, but he didn’t need to. She was humming loudly enough that the carriages vibrated with the tune. Her voice, though not particularly good, was full of happiness, and his chest filled with warmth and that old awful ache that, before she’d gone off to America, he had gotten used to feeling every time he saw her.
He rounded the mail coach and was met with a sight that made him stagger to a halt: the woman of his dreams, cheeks flushed, hair curling in damp tendrils all about her face and neck, eyes alight, and lips smiling as she hummed.
And only half dressed.
The sound that came out of his mouth was more groan than gasp.
Her head snapped up, eyes flying wide open, and her fingers arrested on the laces of her shift.
There was a moment of taut silence in which Frye swiftly memorized every gorgeous curve concealed by only the thinnest layer of linen, and in which crimson rushed into her entire face and spread down her neck and over the exquisite mounds of the tops of her breasts.
She snatched up her coat and pressed it to her front.
“What are you doing here?” she said breathlessly.
“I think I’ve better reason to ask you the same.” His voice was thoroughly husky. He was a dog.
“You do not. Go away.”
Tearing his gaze from the vision, he turned his back to her.
“Do finish dressing,” he said. “I’ll wait.”
“I said, go.”
“You did not use the magic word.”
“Please go away.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“And leave you unprotected for some other man to happen by? Not on your life.” He folded his arms.
Rustling sounded behind him and he imagined her hastily pulling on the remainder of her clothes.
“You are outrageous,” she said.
“I did not just return from a walk across the pasture in two feet of snow wearing another person’s clothes. So of the two of us, really, I don’t think I am the outrageous one.”
“They aren’t another person’s clothes,” she said.
“No?”
“They are mine.”
“Interesting.”
“It is easier to move in the snow when wearing breeches.”
“Is that so?” He was enjoying this beyond reason. He would never forget the vision of her in that chemise. Ever.
“You would know that if you had ever tried running through snow wearing skirts.”
“I suppose I would. But as I am neither an Eastern prince nor a Catholic priest, I haven’t any experience wear—”
Then she was beside him and he was looking through the murky dimness into her beautiful stormy eyes.
“You won’t tell anyone, will you?” she said.
“That you enjoy dressing as
a man?”
“It isn’t that I enjoy it,” she said, her brows dipping together at the bridge of her perfectly pert nose. She wore an unexceptionable wool gown that covered every inch of her arms and neck and made him wish the entire species of sheep—not to mention weavers and seamstresses—to the devil.
“It is that I . . .” She halted her own words.
He waited.
Her cheeks were still dark pink, her lips nearly red, and he needed to taste them again. Urgently. He wanted to kiss her and touch her and strip her to her undergarments and haul her onto one of these carriage seats and do things to her he’d dreamed about doing to her. With her.
“I was running,” she said.
His heartbeats stumbled. “From whom?” He would murder the villain.
“From no one. Just—I just ran.”
“You ran?”
Her shoulders seemed to settle. “I find it invigorating to run places. That is, not really to run to places, rather to run fast, any place that I can without notice.”
Memory of the footrace that she had won when she was a girl of eight came back to him.
As though she knew the direction of his thoughts, she nodded.
“I never outgrew it,” she said. “I have always enjoyed riding and, of course, walking in the park. But then I must always be with a footman or maid, moving slowly and decorously. Early in the mornings like this, when Sally is still abed and I am able to run alone, I feel . . .” Her words petered out.
“What do you feel when you run, Charlotte?”
She bit her sweet lips. “I have never spoken of this before to anybody. I don’t know why I am telling you.”
“In fact, you have told me almost nothing as yet,” he said with a slight smile.
She frowned.
“And you have done the same.” Moving around him, she took up her men’s clothing, wrapped them in a little ball, and headed for the door. “I will see you at breakfast, Your G—”
He reached for her arm. She turned in his grasp and she was so close he could see every dark lash curling from the damp, and feel the heat radiating from her body.
“You can tell me,” he said. “You can always tell me.”
“Why did you go into Mr. Sheridan’s room yesterday morning?”
At the Christmas Wedding Page 21